Christmas Eve in NZ: Where to track Santa

  • 24/12/2016
Santa will be very busy delivering presents to the world on Saturday night (Getty)
Santa will be very busy delivering presents to the world on Saturday night (Getty)

It's Christmas Eve, which means right now Santa will be squeezing the last few presents onto his sleigh in preparation for his physics-defying delivery run. If you want to keep up with where Santa is, there are a number of options.

  • WeatherWatch.co.nz – Local weather forecaster WeatherWatch.co.nz entered the Santa-tracking business for the first time in 2011. As it's usually a weather site, the tracker includes satellite weather maps of the North Pole, the Pacific and New Zealand, so Santa knows whether he needs to put on a raincoat or a singlet.
  • NORAD – While some have just got into the game, NORAD has been tracking Santa since the mid-1950s. It all began with a typo. A department store listed a phone number, which kids could reach Santa on, except something went wrong and the number instead put kids through to Continental Air Defence Command Operations Centre, which would later become the North American Aerospace Defence Command – NORAD. The commander on duty, Col Harry Shoup, played along, asking his crew to try and find Santa – and a tradition was born.
  • Google – Google's Santa tracker includes a countdown, a view of Christmas traditions around the world, games and a briefing from Mrs Claus, showcasing the method that allows him to visit every house in the world in just one night.
  • Santa Update – This site claims to be the most accurate Santa tracker, because it's based at the North Pole. Santa Update is more of a blog than a graphical tracker like the others, and posts several updates a day on just what Santa, the elves and the reindeer are up to.

Newshub.